Apocalypse postponed: Essays by Umberto Eco (Perspectives)

121 Pages·2000·12.464 MB·English

by  Umberto Eco

PERSPECTIVES
APOCALYPSE POSTPONED
Series editors: Colin MacCabe and Paul Willemen
Umberto Eco
The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System
Fredric Jameson
Apocalypse Postponed
Umberto Eco Edited by
Looks and Frictions ROBERT LUMLEY
Paul Willemen
The Vision Machine
Pa ul Virilio
Cinema in Transit
Serge Daney
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
BFI PUBLISHING
Contents
First published in 1994 by Acknowledgments Vll
Indiana University Press Introduction by Robert Lumley 1
601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47404
and the Part One: Mass Culture: Apocalypse Postponed
British Film Institute
21 Stephen Street, London WIP IPL, UK 1 Apocalyptic and Integrated Intellectuals:
Mass communications and theories of mass culture 17
The British Film Institute exists to encourage the development of film, television and video
in the United Kingdom, and to promote knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of the 2 The World of Charlie Brown 36
culture of the moving image. Its activities include the National Film and Television
3 Reactions of Apocalyptic and Integrated Intellectuals:
Archive; the National Film Theatre; the Museum of the Moving Image; the London Film
Festival; the producrion and distribution of film and video; funding and support for Then (1964) 45
regional activities; Library and Information Services; Stills, Posters and Designs; 4 Reactions of the Author: Now (1974 and 1977) 51
Research; Publishing and Education; and the monthly Sight and Sound magazine.
5 Orwell, or Concerning Visionary Power 58
Copyright © Umberto Eco 1994
Introduction © Robert Lumley 1994 6 The Future of Literacy 64
All righ ts reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, Part Two: Mass Media and the Limits of Communication
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. 1 Political Language: The use and abuse of rhetoric 75
2 Does the Audience have Bad Effects on Television? 87
US Cataloging data available from the Library of Congress
3 Event as Mise en scene and Life as Scene-setting 103
ISBN 0-253-31851-3
4 The Phantom of Neo-TV: The debate on Fellini's
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Ginger and Fred 108
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Part Three: The Rise and Fall of Counter-cultures
ISBN 0--85170-418-2 Does Counter-culture Exist? 115
0--85170-446--8 pbk
2 The New Forms of Expression 129
Typeset in Great Britain by
3 On Chinese Comic Strips: Counter-information and
Fakenham Photosetting Limited, Norfolk
alternative information 148
Printed in the United States 4 Independent Radio in Italy 167
5 Striking at the Heart of the State? 177
Part Four: In Search of Italian Genius
1 Phenomena of This Sort Must Also be Included in Any Acknowledgments
Panorama of Italian Design 185
2 A Dollar for a Deputy: La Cicciolina 196
Details of original place of publication and (where necessary) the
3 For Grace Received 200
name of the translator: 'Apocalyptic and Integrated Intellectuals'
4 The Italian Genius Industry 211 (Apocalittici e integrati, Milan, 1964; trans. Jenny Condie); 'The
World of Charlie Brown' (Apocalittici e integrati; trans. William
Index 225 Weaver; first published in translation for exhibition catalogue 'The
Graphic Art of Charles Schulz'); 'Reactions of Apocalyptic and Inte
grated Intellectuals: Then' and 'Reactions of the Author: Now' (Apo
calittici e integrati, 1977; trans. Jenny Condie); 'Orwell, or Concern
ing Visionary Power' (preface to Mondadori edition of 1984; trans.
Jenny Condie); 'The Future of Literacy' (International Conference:
'Books and Literacy: A Response to New Developments', Amsterdam
1987); 'Political Language: The use and abuse of rhetoric' (G. L
Beccaria [ed.], I linguaggi settoriali in Italia, Milan, 1973; trans.
Robert Lumley); 'Does the Audience have Bad Effects on Television?'
(Dalla periferia dell'impero, Milan, 1977; trans. Robert Lumley);
'Event as mise-en-scene and Life as Scene-setting' (G. F. Bettetini
[ed.], Forme scenografiche della teievisione, Milan, 1982; trans.
Robert Lumley); 'The Phantom of Neo-TV: The debate on Fellini's
Ginger and Fred' (L'Espresso, 2 February 1986; trans. Jenny Con
die); 'Does Counter-culture Exist?' (Sette anni di desiderio, Milan,
1983; trans. Jenny Condie); 'The New Forms of Expression' (Atti
dell'VIII congresso dell'associazione intemazionale per g/i studi di
lingua e letteratura itaiiana, April 1973; trans. Jenny Condie); 'On
Chinese Comic Strips: Counter-information and alternative infor
mation' (V. S., 1, September 1971; trans. [from French] Liz Heron);
'Independent Radio in Italy' (Cultures, 1, 1978); 'Striking at the
Heart of the State?' (Sette anni di desiderio; trans. Geoffrey Nowell
Smith); 'Phenomena of This Sort Must Also be Included .. .' (P.
Sartogo [ed.], Italian Re-evolution: Design in Italy in the 19805; La
Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, 1982); 'A Dollar
for a Deputy: La Cicciolina' (L'Espresso, 5 July 1987; trans. Robert
Lumley); 'For Grace Received' (L'Espresso supplement, 19 April
19..10; trans. Robert Lumley); 'The Italian Genius Industry' (II cos
tume di casa, Milan, 1973; trans. Jenny Condie).
vii
Introduction
Robert Lumley
Umberto Eco is mainly known outside Italy as the writer of The
Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, novels that became
international bestsellers in the 1980s. In Italy, Eco's name was well
established some thirty years ago with Opera aperta (1962),1 widely
seen as a manifesto of the Italian neo-avantgarde; Diario minimo
(1963),2 a brilliant exercise in stylistic pastiche; and Apocalittici e
integrati (1964), whose explorations of mass culture became a touch
stone for cultural commentators. It is the last book that provides the
springboard for this collection of Eco's writings on cultural questions
in the period from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s. This introduction
will therefore take it as a starting-point, before going on to discuss
Eco's role as an intellectual in relation to Italian debates about cul
ture, society and politics.
Apocalittici e integrati came out at a critical moment in postwar
history in the wake of the 'economic miracle', and its distinction
between 'apocalyptic' and 'integrated' responses to the accompanying
cultural transformation has entered the language. Today the book's
basic arguments about the need to analyse and understand the work
ings of mass cultural products before passing judgment, and about
the subsequent importance of discriminating rather than accepting or
rejecting them wholesale, have become commonplace (even if phan
tom battles between 'high' and 'low' culture continue to be re
enacted).3 To appreciate the impact and consequences of a book like
Apocalittici e i~tegrati one ha~ to reconstruct a context in which
Europe was struggling to come to terms with a rise of commercial
culture to which the United States had become habituated.
A review in the Times Literary Supplement (which, interestingly,
examines Eco's book alongside Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel's The
Popular Arts) is symptomatic. The situation of the arts in the twen
tieth century is compared to that of the horse: 'Outside a few under
developed countries it has been entirely replaced by the automobile,
which runs faster, and the tractor, which pulls heavier loads. It sur
viv~s entirely as a luxury.' The review continues: 'The professional
1
writer of books is in the position of the handloom weaver after the Eco is very much of a generation that has not grown up from the
invention of the power-loom ... As every advertising agent and editor cradle with mass culture, and for whom it has the slightly exotic aura
knows, it is the ~photographer and not the "artist" who today com of forbidden fruit (an idea reinforced by its largely American prove
mands the high fees.' The new reality might be undesirable, and 'no nance). His citation of Leonardo da Vinci ('Truth is so excellent that,
class of people is enthusiastic about writing its own obituary'. But if it praises but small things, they become noble') serves as a high
there were intellectuals coming to terms with 'industrial culture' in cultural justification of an exploration into barbarian lands. Signifi
different countries, forming three main currents: 'The Americans cantly, Eco dedicates his book to the apocalyptics 'without whose
have discovered, described and measured, the Continentals - es unjust, biased, neurotic, desperate censure I could never have elabor
pecially the French and Italians - have theorized, and the British have ated three-quarters of the ideas I want to share here'. But no, Eco isn't
moralized.'4 one of their company (or only for twelve hours in the day, as he says
However, the moralizing that might here be associated with in 'The Future of Literacy'). Rather it is the vision of the outsider (the
Richard Hoggart's classic The Uses of Literacy was not exclusive to anthropologist looking at his own society?), or of the artist who
Britain.5 There was a widespread hostility on the part of European makes us see by making things strange, that inspires him. By contrast,
intellectuals towards what was seen as an American-led invasion of the integrated intellectual tends to be ignored, dismissed or, in the
'mass culture' and a consequent standardization and homologization case of Marshall McLuhan, mercilessly taken apart.9
of cultural forms at the expense of rich and variegated national ones. Yet Eco has never lived on the margins, and his refutation of
In Italy this saw an unholy alliance of Left and Right: for the idealist Adornian pessimism concerning the 'culture industry' has been sus
tradition of neo-Crocean thought (influential also among Grams tained by his own involvement in that industry. From 1955 he
cians) Art was the expression of the Spirit and was embodied in the worked on cultural programmes for RAI television, from 1959 he
works of the masters; for the Marxist tradition of the Frankfurt started a lifelong collaboration with Bompiani as editor (later con
School, successfully imported into Italy from the late 1950s, Art was sultant and author), and in 1965 he began writing for the weekly
the antithesis of industry. In addition, there was the antipathy of magazine L'Espresso, for which he now contributes a regular col
Catholic culture to the emergent 'threat'. 6 And if this picture is some umn. His academic post at the University of Bologna perhaps rep
what oversimplified (overlooking Croce's notes on popular song on resents his most consistent activity - teacher and researcher in the
the one hand, and the non-Adornian positions within the Frankfurt field of semiotics (a discipline he helped to found) ~ but he has
School on the other), it reflects the polemical thrust of Eco's critique. maintained a multiplicity of roles. It is difficult without examining
He felt himself to be somewhat isolated, occupying a narrow strip this 'practical' side to understand Eco's cultural contribution, and too
between the great 'churches' of Italian postwar culture. Yet, as a often commentators focus entirely on his writings as if they existed
glance at his overview 'Reactions of Apocalyptic and Integrated Intel independently of other realities.
lectuals' shows, the book's reception was more favourable than had Eco's involvement with the world of publishing illustrates this well.
been anticipated. Not least because, as its regular republication Firstly, in relation to the 'modernization' of Italian culture in the
suggests, its detailed and persuasive readings of texts of mass culture 1960~: Eco was one of a generation of intellectuals determined to
from comics to television made it not only timely but a model of how open up Italy to international currents, breaking down the cultural
to approach a new cultural order. autarchy identified with Croce,lO and producing cultural forms better
At the same time, when reading the essay 'Apocalyptic and Inte adapted to conditions of modernity. It was an exciting time when
grated Intellectuals', one is struck by what Eco recalls as his' "En American sociology and later French structuralism served to attack
lightenment" belief that desirable cultural action would bring about the citadels of orthodoxy. In literature the Italian neo-avanguardia
an improvement in messages'. Eco seems to identify with the figure of represented a radical challenge to the poetics of ne~-realism and an
the 'uomo colto' or 'man of culture', someone 'aware of his surround attempt to make language itself a cultural battleground.ll One might
ings, who knows how to discriminate within a hierarchy of values perhaps expect the poetry of the novissimi to have been printed on an
continually undergoing revision, and who is able to develop coherent artisanal basis. But no. The new literature was published by com
proposals for action to bring about changes'. 7 There is an underlying panies such as Feltrinelli and Bompiani. As Eco observes of the avant
assumption that while mass culture needs to be understood whatever garde Gruppo 63, of which he was a leading light: '[It] was born
the subsequent value-judgments, the real provocation, and pleasure, because certain people, working inside established institutions, had
lies in resc"uing works like Shultz's cartoons (see 'The World of Char made a different choice, both on the front of cultural politics and on
lie Brown'), and elevating them to the status of 'Art,.8 ~at of culture as a political act. On the former, the project consisted
2 3
of blowing up the invisible structures of the "tiny clique" which to use libraries, how to file information etc. Culture is not the mon
governed culture. [. .. J On the second front, the goal was to proceed, opoly of Art and Artists but is, in Raymond Williams's word, 'ordin
by way of a criticism of the miniature system of official culture, to a a;y'.· And this has implication~ for what constitutes culture ~nd how
critique of the grand system of bourgeois society.'12 It was precisely to analyse it. If a predominantly 'aesthetic' or 'ethical' conception of
by acceding to (or wresting) control of decision-making in cultural culture persists in Italy, as evidenced by the entries in standard dictio
institutions that 'men of culture' forced much needed changes, naries, Eco prefers an anthropological definition as answering the
making themselves, in turn, into the new clique at the top. 'requirements of a scientific approach - scientific in the sense of
Secondly, this involvement had consequences for how 'culture' allowing a cautious structural descriptiveness' ('Does Counter-culture
came to be defined. In Eco it is visible in his interest in the whole cycle exist?').
of cultural activity from production, on which he focused in his Eco the enlightened reformer of the early and mid-1960s shared in
earlier works, through to distribution and consumption, which has the widespread hopes in cultural modernization from above produc
concerned him especially in relation to television. His recent warnings ing the conditions for the growth of a participatory democracy from
about the dangers of using acid paper for books signals an appreci below. However, it took the student and worker rebellions of 1968-9
ation of the material conditions governing the very (im)permanence to dispel such illusions, even though these had already been tarnished
of cultural products and their communication to later generations: by the failures of the Centre-Left government (whose verbal vacilla
'We should start by thinking of ecological books. When, in the last tions are brilliantly dissected in 'Political Language: the use and abuse
century, the book industry stopped making books from rags and of rhetoric'). For some, including the Socialist thinker Norberto Bob
started to make them from trees, it not only menaced our survivaL it bio, the protest, at least initially, seemed to presage a new barbar
I7
jeopardized the civilization of th~ book' ('Books and Literacy'). ' ism. Eco, however, was one of those who welcomed the challenge to
Few other cultural commentators can rival Eco in his knowledge the ancien regime from the very start. Speaking to Newsweek in
and love of books and book-making, an area of expertise he puts to 1987, he still put a positive gloss on events: 'Even though all visible
good use in his portrait of the publisher, Garamond, in Foucault's traces of 1968 are gone, it profoundly changed the way all of us, at
Pendulum. Emblematic of this familiarity with the inside of the pub least in Europe, behave and relate to one another. Relations between
lishing world is his appreciation of the art of inventing titles.13 The bosses and workers, students and teachers, even children and parents,
technology also fascinates Eco, whether it is the quills and inks of the have opened up. They'll never be the same again.'18
medieval scriptorium or the computer of today. Above all, he attaches To some extent Eco felt vindicated. He notes in 'Reactions of the
great importance to the hidden arts of 'technique'. His admiration of Author' that he had predicted that 'a quantitative growth in infor
artifice and virtuosity - the display of technique - inform his cham mation, no matter how muddled and oppressive it appears, can
pioning of cultural phenomena as diverse as the Baroque, rhetoric produce unforeseen results.' The conflict between apocalyptics and
and hyperrealism. His own version of Raymond Queneau's Exercices optimists continued even if political affiliations had changed, with the
de style affirms the Frenchman's hymn to rhetorical techniques and is Left now leading denunciations of mass culture as capitalist. For Eco,
in itself a virtuoso translation14 (that underestimated 'craft' without redefining his role was facilitated by his close association with the
which books like this one would not exist). And Eco's 'occasional artistic avant-garde from the foundation of Gruppo 63 to the demise
writings' are likewise characterized by 'the Baroque taste for the of the journal Quindici. For all their differences over what was to be
excessive, the hyperbolic, the defamiliarising, the fake and the done, there was a common antipathy to the values and culture that
apocryphal' .15 went by the name 'neo-capitalism'. Nor should the role of friendship
But there is a more mundane aspect to Eco's interest in technique and mutual respect be forgotten. Eco did not follow Nanni Balestrini
that calls for comment, namely his concern for use, or use-value. down the path of revolutionary politics but, as seen in the essay 'New
Culture, for Eco, is about 'making things' and the verb fare ('to make' Forms of Expression', he continued to follow and appreciate his
and 'to do') recurs in his writings, along with the figure of the 'pro work.
ducer'. His essay on design, for instance, insists on the importance of Eco's position was both strategically vital (at the intersection of
anonymous, as opposed to 'signed', design, and on the diffuse and democratic and revolutionary politics) and difficult if not invidious,
collective rather than exclusively individual nature of creativity being vulnerable to moral blackmail by those to his left. Between
('Phenomena of this sort must also be included .. .'). In Italy his 1968 and 1977 (the year of a second wave of youth protest) Eco
manual on how to write a dissertation is on every university student's ej.gaged in a continui~g dialogue with the protagonists ~f the ~ocial
bookshelf.I6 Above all, it is useful - a cultural guide explaining how movements, searching to understand them as producers of new cul-
4 S
tural meanings and to make sense of messages (slogans, grathn, 1960s and 1970s even among non-Marxists like Eco. In Italy the
demonstrations etc.) often seen as 'senseless', 'irrational' or plain cultural arena was flooded with the images of the newly deregulated
'nonsense' Y Clearly Eco's sympathies are with those who subvert television channels, provoking a reprise of the mass culture debate of
convention, whether it is the situationist provocations of Gruppo Ufo the mid-1960s~24 But this time many of the former apocalyptics of the
(see the questionnaire attached to 'New Forms of Expression') or the social movements had become the ideologues and professionals of the
experiments of Radio Alice (an independent radio station named after media revolution.
Alice in Wonderland). He is even prepared in the early 19705 to read Italy had changed between the early 1960s and the 1980s from a
Mao's Little Red Book as a lesson in openness: 'Thanks to its aphor country with major areas of poverty and illiteracy into a consumer
istic structure and encyclopedic accessibility it offers itself as a tool society with a literate population. Throughout the course of this
for application and interpretation in any circumstance .... It is a tool transformation television acted both as a motor of and a metaphor
with a thousand possible uses rather than a one-way track like the for change, introducing new forms of cultural production and con
railway timetable.'20 Consistent with the ideas first enunciated in sumption and symbolizing all that was modern and innovatory (or, in
Open Work, Eco favours forms of communication that are open: the eyes of the apocalyptics, all that reduced cultural life to the lowest
'''Openness'' for Eco,' writes David Robey, 'results from the artist's common denominator). It is not surprising, therefore, that Eco fol
decision to leave the production of the work's meaning to the public lowed the development of the medium closely, focusing particularly
or to chance; the consequent multiplicity of interpretations is pecu on television's language and forms (the live broadcast, the vocabulary
liarly suited to the present, because it corresponds to the feelings of of the quiz-master, TV genres) and carrying out pioneering joint
disorder and senselessness produced in us by the world iil which we research on audience reception of TV messages using a semiotic
live'.21 approach ('Does the Audience have Bad Effects on Television?').
On the other hand, Eco is suspicious and critical of what he sees as Until the advent of private channels in the late 1970s, the state broad
attempts to impose order by suppressing complexity and polyvalency casting company, RAI, had a monopoly and produced programmes
in the name of some ideological mission, whether that of the Cold according to the public service trinity of 'inform, educate and enter
War hero 'Superman' or of the dogmatic Marxist theorist. While Eco tain'. Then the rules were overturned as the pursuit of ratings made
too was swayed by the 'wind from the East', which swept along so entertainment ('spettacolo') sovereign and made many genre distinc
many left-wing intellectuals in Italy (Pasolini, Bertolucci, Moravia), tions redundant. Eco, with his flair for neologism, announced the
he still kept his distance just as he had consistently done in relation to arrival of 'Neo-TV' in the place of the television of a paleolithic age
the powerful Communist Party, more attracted as he was to radical ('Paleo-TV'). With Neo-TV, he writes, there is 'the cancerous pro
and libertarian ideas (heresies) than to party orthodoxies.22 The liferation of the same programme endlessly repeated ... the ultimate
political culture of the Red Brigades is but the most extreme manifes impossibility of making distinctions, discerning and choosing' ('The
tation of ideological closure, and represents 'not the enemy of the Phantom of Neo-TV'). The triumph of phatic communication and of
great systems but their natural, accepted and taken for granted self-referentiality also brings the abolition of reference to an outside
counterpart' ('Striking at the Heart of the State?'). In fact Eco's world ('the referent'), or the end of a reality that is not fabricated for
novels, The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, can be television's mise en scene ('Event as mise en scene').
interpreted as political allegories of a country described by one his The world of Neo-TV is depicted with 'ill-concealed hatred and
torian as a victim of a 'torbid and bloody game consisting of mas loathing' in Fred and Ginger by that old apocalyptic Federico Fellini.
sacres, cover-ups and blackmail,23 with political forces manipulating Eco sympathizes but insists, 'First you have to understand, with cool
secret services and vice versa. Obscurantism, dogma and rec~urse t~ detachment, its inner workings.' Likewise with La Cicciolina, a
violence are all enemies of the reason and openness of which Eco is a character of Fellinian inspiration, the 'porno-star' who caused
champion. outrage - and amusement - by standing (successfully) for parliament.
The decline of the social movements and the dramatic episodes of To be condemned? But wait, says Eco, consider the arguments in
terrorism in the years 1978-9 marked the end of a decade of turbu turn, don't presume that her job, intellectual competence or morals
lent change in Italy during which intellectuals felt impelled to inter disqualify her. Look at the other parliamentarians! And using para
vene in political debates. Workers continued to exist but somehow dox, a favourite figure in an extensive rhetorical repertoire, Eco
the working class was declared to have disaoneared. T:'\lk of no,t assumes the role of the clevil's advocate in reverse, only finally to
modernism; post-industrial or information so;i~ties qui~k-l~ dis~fac~d ~me down against Ms Staller's candidature.
the metaphors of Marxist discourse so current in the writings of the Eco does not renounce the need to make value judgments and
6 7
choices but he dispels any impression of moralism through the dis ... and consists in our ability to marry humanist tradition and tech
tancing effect of humour. Somehow Eco is 'above' a certain kind of nological development. What has undoubtedly acted as a brake on
engagement and his viewpoint is well illustrated by his reply to Stuart our culture, the predominance of the humanistic over the technologi
Hall's question: 'Isn't it extremely convenient when intellectuals cal, has also permitted certain fusions, eruptions of fantasy within
impose on themselves this partial retirement from engagement?' technology and the technologization of fantasy. Secondly, Italy is a
'Well,' says Eco, 'there's a book I like by Italo Calvino called The country that has known enormous crises, foreign domination, mas
Baron in the Trees, which is the story of an 18th-century aristocrat sacres. And yet (or for this reason) has produced Raphael and Michel
who decides to spend all his life on the top of a tree without stepping angelo .... What often fascinates foreigners is that in Italy economic
down. But in doing so he still takes part in the French Revolution .... crises, uneven development, terrorism accompany great inventive
He is a metaphor, an allegory. There is a way to stay up a tree and to ness.'27
change life on the ground.,25 It might well be better to live harmoniously and just invent the
Is there something 'Italian' about this answer? The easy reference cuckoo-clock, says Eco, but creativity seems linked to improvisation
to a work of fiction to explain a contemporary situation? Its freedom and adaptation to difficult circumstances, a theory shared by Hans
from a certain moral discourse more ingrained in Protestant cultures? Magnus Enzensberger, a critical admirer of 'Italian genius' .28 Utopia
There is no simple answer. Anyway it helps lead on to a further might be desirable but social conflict and difference is a condition of
question with which to conclude this Introduction, namely 'Just how human society. Conflict is not something to be suppressed. The prob
"Italian" is Umberto Eco?' lem is to make it productive of new ideas that confront rather than
National identity, paradoxically, is often most acutely perceived by ignore realities. In this respect Eco is part of a fine tradition going
the cosmopolitan. Travel, speaking other languages, living and work back as far as Machiavelli and embracing liberal thought. If Italy has
ing abroad, all invite reflection on one's own cultural formation and been described as a 'difficult democracy', it is also a country which
identity. They can make a person feel intensely 'Italian' or 'American' has developed a remarkable openness of debate and enquiry.
when away but not fully integrated when at home. This seems very However, this level of generalization is perilously close to banal
much to be the case with Eco: conversant in several languages, a stereotype. It gets away from the false cosmopolitanism that Gramsci
translator, an academic who has taught regularly in North and South saw as apeculiarly Italian vice and according to which everything
America, a member, de facto, of the 'jet set'. Furthermore, his busi foreign is automatically better. Instead there is the danger of forget
ness as a scholar is concerned with developing and applying a 'science ting that there is often no such thing as 'Italy'. Geographers, socio
of signs' which with Eco entails the whole dimension of what Teresa logists and students of language have for some time pointed to the
de Lauretis calls his 'semiotic imagination'. What better way to plurality of cultures and economies hidden by the adjective 'Italian'.
investigate the problems of communication and culture than by mov Historians of art, for instance, have called the peninsula an ideal
ing between different cultures, contemporary and historical. Imagine laboratory for the study of the relationship between centre and peri
our hero: 'For Eco, John Ford of the semiological frontier, Europe phery: 'A relative ease of exchanges with faraway countries has been
and America, the Middle Ages and the Future are the times and the accompanied by limited and difficult communication with inland
places of a personal and political fiction, his ever present temptation: areas close by. Even today it is easier to ?o by train from Turin to
the Middle Ages of the scholar wandering among the ruins of a Dijon than from Grosseto to Urbino.'2 Tullio De Mauro even
knowledge still useful, and the Extraterrestrial Future of the Martian suggests that acknowledging that 'the country is an interlacement of
avant-gardes that is already ours. ,26 countries' is the basis for overcoming the barriers between the official
A gatekeeper between the cultural worlds of the United States and unitary 'Italy' of the rulers and the 'Italies' of the ruled.30
Italy (the US of 'mass culture' and the Italy of 'high culture'), Eco has In this perspective, Eco is Piedmontese not italian, and in debates
become in Omar Calabrese's words 'a sort of unofficial representative on cultural phenomena within a national forum he frequently refers
of Italian culture abroad' while he has long been an importer and to himself in this way. A good example is found in the discussion of
interpreter of foreign cultural goods 'on the periphery of the Empire'. comic actors: 'For my part I personally prefer Toto, and the reason
In the process he has frequently reflected on the cultural configur Placido misunderstood me was that he, being a Southerner, instinc
ations of national character. Asked in an interview in 1985 about tively distrusted the likes of me, a Piedmontese' ('The Phantom of
what for him constituted italianita, he gave a reply that has some Neo-TV'). Being from this region actually means being identified with
application to himself: 'An Italian ~hara~ter does ~x"ist. The first is a i;kingdom that-annexed sou-them Italy (or, euphemistically, 'unified
transhistorical characteristic which relates to genialita and inventivita Italy'), and significantly the allusion is humorous and about humour,
9
that great defuser of cultural tensions. Certainly Eco is a 'northerner' both immensely readable and illuminating. To what extent this is to
and his political-cultural formation is closely bound up with the cities do with being Italian is difficult to judge. It is certainly difficult to
of Turin (where he studied), Milan (where he lives) and Bologna imagine Eco as an Englishman or an American. More important than
(v/here he teaches). Arguably he is an advocate of a 'modern indus his debt to national tradition is probably his ability to mediate be
trial culture' that, historically, belongs to the North. tween different cultures (whether defined by geography, social class
However, Eco's writings question any simplistic model of 'modern or professional activity) in an age in which established cultural fron
ization' and explore areas unimagined by the official culture: 'We tiers have been dramatically contested and redrawn and in which the
should start by dispelling the illusion of those convinced that emi challenge of 'globalization' has made interdisciplinarity an impera
gration, social mobility, motorways and the car would blow away the tive.
dark clouds of obscurantism .... technological development provokes
rather than reduces the need for the sacred' ('For Grace Received'). Choice of essays and presentation
Italy is also the land of thaumaturges and unrecognized poets, The first outline of this collection was drafted in 1984, since when
uncharted and ignored. The average parish priest may deny the exist (after being rescued from the bottom drawer by Geoffrey Nowell
ence of a thaumaturgic press, 'like a vice-chancellor asked about Smith) it has undergone major revisions. David Robey suggested
photo-novels for housewives'; but, writes Eco, its circulation makes including the essays and preface from Apocaiittici e integrati. Then
that of the weekly L'Espresso look insignificant. It is not a regional Umberto Eco sent a number of things subsequently included mainly
phenomenon (though more widespread in the South). Likewise the in Parts I and III ('Yesterday evening, getting back to Milan, I set
'vanity press' analysed in 'The Italian Genius Industry'. Both have a about looking through my archives until 3 a.m., and here's the
national diffusion but they appear locally in the form of publications resule).
directed by a particular mission, sanctuary or publisher and are too The objectives in making the collection are:
readily dismissed by intellectuals as signs of 'provincialism' and
'backwardness'. Again Eco insists on taking seriously what others 1. To convey some sense of the development of Eco's writings on
have no time for. If the humour is sometimes uncomfortably at the cultural issues from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, docu
expense of those who are duped or dupe themselves into believing in menting as well as re-presenting past works.
miraculous powders or the equally wondrous powers of the religion 2. To focus on journalism and occasional essays.
of Art, he nevertheless reveals in microcosm cultural realities of sig 3. To include historically significant pieces not previously trans
nificant proportions. lated (notably from Apocaiittici e integrati).
As a piece of cultural analysis 'The Italian Genius Industry' ranks 4. To include material written about Italy and for Italians and
as an Eco tour de force, and one to which he is evidently still attached which have tended not to be translated for that reason.
since it is reproduced wholesale in the description of the publisher S. To communicate the wit and brio of Eco's writing.
Manuzio, in Foucault's Pendulum (except that the 'Fourth Dimension
Author' or FDA has now become the 'Self-Financing Author'). The The subdivision into four parts is designed to group essays around
seemingly harmless but possibly suspect (the Italian title of the piece, certain themes - the debate on mass culture, mass media (especially
'genio italico', has a Fascist ring) poets, writers and philosophers television), counter-culture, and what Eco referred to as 'Italian fol
inhabit the fourth dimension of literature because (self)excluded from lies'. The essay 'Apocalyptic and Integrated Intellectuals' is put at the
the third dimension, constituted by recognized literature. Ignored by beginning because it precedes the others chronologically and provides
the official culture (none of their work is reviewed in the press), they the framework for the analyses of mass culture that constitute the
form a parallel universe complete with journals and their own 'Who's bulk of the collection. Otherwise the reader should not feel obliged to
Who'. Overwhelmingly kitsch in the titles and characters not only of read the parts sequentially.
the books but of the authors, the Fourth Dimension also harbours Many of the pieces first appeared as part of continuing debates and
talents like Blotto, whose 'unbridled linguistic invention' rivals that of are full of allusions to contemporary events as well as to a stock of
the neo-avanguardia. In his pursuit of the marginal, the peripheral knowledge the average Italian reader might be expected to possess.
and the 'provincial' Eco invents a kind of fisheye lens whose distor The introduction aims to give a general context, but notes are used
tions !live unsusoected insights into the core culture itself. for more specific references. A good example occurs in 'A Dollar for a
-Thi~ ability ~f Eco's to-reverse cultural optics, to find an unex Deputy', in which Eco's jokes about poiiticians are incomprehensibie
pected angle or to create an unlikely juxtaposition, makes his writing '10 anyone not knowing that Mr X has a moustache and Mr Y has a
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